Kukla's Korner Hockey

Good thing Darcy Tucker is mellowing.
For much of his career Tucker was one of those guys who could make you admire his tenacity one moment, then curse his immaturity and fool-headedness the next. The upside was that he could upset the other team and make them forget they were there to play hockey. The downside was that he’d just as often forget why he was there himself—inevitably do more yapping than scoring; he would leap into an official’s face flapping his arms like Big Bird on an amphetamine rush, or try to beat up the entire Senators bench.

In the salary cap world, where there isn’t much separating the top of the playoff pool from the bottom, it seems next to impossible to pick a favorite.
Maybe we should just pick the Stanley Cup champions to repeat. Oh, wait a minute, the Carolina Hurricanes might not make the playoffs. Maybe we should pick last season’s other Stanley Cup finalist. No that doesn’t work because the Edmonton Oilers are all but out of the playoffs.
Maybe we should draw a name out a hat because the truth is there might be eight favorites in each conference. Another No. 8 seed might just reach the Finals again this spring like the Oilers did last June.

read on... Kevin breaks down the plus and minuses for the cup contenders…

It’s time for another friendly game of Fact or Fiction. In this edition, we’ll focus on some interesting league matters. Do we have all the answers? Well, it’s a fact we don’t, but that won’t stop us from taking a stab at these intriguing questions.
The NHL will eventually expand to Las Vegas
Fact. Within the next five years, the league will expand to two new cities, and you can bet Las Vegas will be one of them. Hollywood mogul Jerry Bruckheimer, a big-time hockey fan, is part of a group that wants to land a team in Vegas.

While Stoll is hopeful he’ll be back this season, he understands that his first concussion with the Oilers could be his last.
Given that there’s so many grey areas when it comes to injuries of the grey matter, knowing when, or if, he’ll play again isn’t as simple a circling a date on the calendar. Far from it.
“It’s tough to explain. There’s so much uncertainty from day to day,” Stoll said Thursday before sitting out his 19th straight game. “There’s a time line with a lot of injuries, but with this there isn’t.

Perhaps players do not fear retaliation because the instigator rule harshly penalizes those who want an eye for an eye. But DiMaio, in his 18th season, also senses a shift in manner, especially among young players.
“Maybe it’s what they’re told in the minors or college,” he said. “You used to really respect the guys ahead of you. Now it seems easier to just say, ‘I’m the guy. I don’t have to earn it.’ “
“It all boils down to respect,” Lightning defenseman Nolan Pratt said. “You want to get a hit and make a guy feel it. But at the same time, you should go about it in the right way.”

Chris Simon may be facing more than just discipline from the NHL for his slash on New York Rangers forward Ryan Hollweg.
Sources tell TSN that both Hollweg and Rangers head athletic trainer Jim Ramsay have been interviewed by the Nassau County District Attorney’s office in the quest to determine whether to pursue legal action against Simon.
A spokesman for the D.A’s office says, ‘‘no decision’’ has been reached yet as the review hasn’t been completed.
‘‘We’re hopeful we’ll have a decision by Monday.’‘

Call it kryptonite for butterfly goalies: short side and high, often on the glove side.
It’s a spot stand-up-style keepers once eliminated by simply moving out to the edge of the crease, playing the angle and forcing the shooter to go stick side or pass. If a shooter went short and a puck somehow managed to squeeze through on that side, it was deemed to be a “bad” goal. Not necessarily so in today’s game.

Tuesday’s Buffalo at Pittsburgh game on VERSUS posted a .41 national household cable rating, garnering 394,678 viewers. The telecast not only was the highest-rated NHL game this year, but the most-viewed NHL regular-season game ever on the network. In addition, the shoot-out thriller outranked every other prime-time cable program in both the Buffalo and Pittsburgh television markets. In Buffalo, the game registered a 12.0 rating, up 16 percent from last season’s comparable average (10.0) for Sabres games on VERSUS. In Pittsburgh, the telecast received a 6.0 rating, making it the highest rating ever in Pittsburgh for a Penguins game on the network.

During my appearance on The Crazy Canucks podcast last night, I brought up the name Ron Duguay, thinking it would start some conversation.
Well, it went over like a lead balloon, pure silence- Then I remembered the age of the folks involved in the podcast. No one knew who Duguay was, except one person stated he might have made a guest appearance o 90210!
Someone has to have a Duguay story, even a Carol Alt story will do… help, I am feeling older by the minute.

Three days before Christmas, the Vancouver Canucks were stumbling along, mired in a three-game losing streak, unable to score many goals, one game below .500, and seemingly going nowhere.
Three months later, however, the Canucks look like they really might be going places—like deep into the Stanley Cup Playoffs, maybe to the Final, and possibly all the way to their first championship. There would be a certain symmetry to it, too, if the Canucks reach the Final. That would mean each of the Western Canadian teams would have represented the Western Conference in the last three championship series.

Continued… including a look at other goings-on in the Western Conference